


The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone

by Eldritchhorrors



Series: The Cold Song [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Awesome, Blow Jobs, Case Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, Love, M/M, Porn, Rimming, Romance, Smut, omg the smut, this is half porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:08:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritchhorrors/pseuds/Eldritchhorrors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic Summary: When Moriarty said that he would burn the heart out of Sherlock, he forgot to mention that someone of his acquaintance already had. (He was saving that little tidbit for later.)</p><p>Series Summary: This is how broken people fall in love.</p><p>"This kiss, the kiss, was simply John’s heart, completely bare and trusting and stupidly obvious. So obvious that even an idiot berk like Sherlock should be able to figure out what was what.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to my beta, Pennypaperbrain, for her quick and fabulous work.
> 
> This is the smut that some of you have been waiting for. I'm sorry this took so long, but my personal John Watson was injured several months ago, and real life has been hard. Thank you for being so understanding.

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death ye will find him.

 

from Owen Wingrave

Composer: Benjamin Britten

Libretto: Myfanwy Piper

Original Lyrics by Thomas Moore

 

The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone

  
It had stopped raining by the time Mycroft’s sleek black car pulled up to the industrial site’s parking lot. Sherlock’s feet hit the uneven concrete with a wet slap, but instead of running for the door like he had previously he waited for both John and Mycroft, who kept a stupidly sedate pace as they navigated their way around the puddled water that had collected during the storm.Twilight cascaded over the water, turning it alternately black and preternaturally irridescent as it caught the oil-slick rainbow that swirled and eddied in tidal miniature.  
  
He was normally impatient waiting for others, when they pulled him down to their level of sloth, when they held him back, when they expected him to bring them up to his speed instead of getting there themselves, but this wasn’t that kind of impatience. This might not have been impatience at all, but it held the same flavor of discontent, rancid on his tongue.  
  
He didn’t want to revisit the scene, yet he must.  
  
He didn’t want any part of this case, yet he was compelled to submerge himself in it.  
  
Impatience flavored with wariness, then.  
  
He was eager for answers but he was carefully weighting scales that tipped precariously between elation at finally having the information to find Sherrinford’s murderer and horror at the path he must take to get there.  
  
A police cruiser and a van were pulled into the front corner of the uneven lot. Sherlock turned a look of half-hearted accusation on Mycroft as he came around the front of the car but Mycroft barely looked at him and forged ahead, as if Sherlock were the one lollygagging.  
  
John closed the door behind himself and looked indecisive. He wasn’t shifting his feet or any other big tell, but there was something around his eyes that told Sherlock that he was thinking of staying behind, in some misplaced attempt to keep out of the way. Give them ‘their space’.  
  
As if that would help.  
  
Sherlock tugged him forward by the elbow and frowned at him until he fell into step.  
  
“We didn’t need them for this. I could have--”  
  
“Breaking and entering at a crime scene might be something you enjoy, but I try to make a habit of staying within channels if possible.”  
  
“When useful, you mean.” John was a perfect straight man, his eyes and his mouth giving nothing away.  
  
Mycroft shrugged then put on his polite company face.  
  
Lestrade was waiting for them where the crime scene tape was strung between the wasted ends of a weather-eaten chain-link fence. His coat was too thin for the weather and he’d pulled his head into the collar like a turtle.  
  
Mycroft did a quick dip under the tape then held it up for Sherlock and John to pass. “Thank you for coming out, Detective Inspector.”  
  
“Piss off, Lestrade.”  
  
Mycroft looked like he found Sherlock’s vulgarity distasteful, but he didn’t argue with it as Sherlock ducked under the tape to follow. “We are quite busy.”  
  
Sherlock turned towards Lestrade and deliberately invaded his personal space. Lestrade was never one to be physically intimidated Sherlock knew, especially by someone he was familiar with and often found vaguely ridiculous, but Sherlock was banking on the man’s blokey abhorrence of emotional exhibitionism to carry it off. He’d put on quite a show earlier, after all.  
  
Lestrade had a restlessness about him that spoke volumes, and layered on top of the lack of sleep, the strain on his relationship with his wife and the fact that most of his friends were her friends if they divorced, money troubles in the face of nuptial deconstruction and the threat of his children wondering where daddy was while mummy made nice with whomever…Lestrade should back down.  
  
But Sherlock hadn’t calculated properly for Lestrade’s paternal idiom.  
  
“I wasn’t just going to open everything up and leave. I wanted to check on you.”  
  
That was the problem with Lestrade. He looked like he’d rather be somewhere else, but there was some appalling fatherly core inside him that made him parent everyone, some over-active nurturing gene that wanted everyone to wear their wellies and a coat because it was cold and wet out, _damn it_. And despite everything he had a soft spot for Sherlock, which baffled Sherlock completely.  
  
A soft spot _in the head_ , perhaps.  
  
Mycroft gave Lestrade a pointed look. “As you can see, I have things well in hand Detective Inspector.”  
  
“I came to check in on the both of you, you git.”  
  
Sherlock made a guttural scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “And you thought it was a good idea to bring them?” He waved towards the building where Donovan and Anderson were huddled against the wall, trying to stave off the biting wind. “This is ludicrous. I need to think!”  
  
“I got the old files this afternoon.” Lestrade looked awkward, like he didn’t know what to say. And what was there to say? Sherlock was perversely happy that Lestrade kept the worst to himself. He had nothing new to add. There, there? It will be alright? Time heals all wounds? None of the usual platitudes Lestrade was so fond of were remotely true or welcomed. Sherlock had heard every single one before age ten and if they were a trite lot of nothing and total bollocks then, they were hardly going to get better with age.  
  
“Bully for you. I’m sure they all had a good laugh.”  
  
Greg shook his head in a denial. “You should have told me.” He looked like a child suddenly finding himself abandoned in a shop.  
  
Lestrade’d had to completely restructure everything he’d thought he’d known about Sherlock, and the new perception didn’t look anything like the old one, apparently. The Sherlock of two days ago had been easy to label and dismiss as unfeeling. Sherlock knew what they thought; hadn’t cared what they thought. A drug-addled, posh tit who didn’t give two shits about anyone but himself.  
  
But a self-centered rich-boy junkie was an easier figure to sum up and dismiss than a Sherlock who’d loved and had that love cruelly ripped away. Sherlock: annoying git was trumped by Sherlock: tragic past, apparently. And now he had to deal with dreary Yarder guilt. He could see it in Lestrade’s face, his hands.  
  
The bit-not-good sliver of schadenfreude that Sherlock felt because of it almost made him smile.  
  
Let Lestrade squirm. Just a bit.  
  
He’d probably let Sherlock get away with anything now. Sherlock would have said murder, but he was quite sure that Lestrade already knew about the cabbie and hadn’t done anything towards investigating it. Practically a green light.  
  
“Told you? On one of our many pub nights? Over a cuppa? While we braided each other’s hair?” Sherlock blinked. “I need to think and your presence is antithetical to that.” Very much so. He analysed everything; he didn’t need to be crunching data on the police as well as the crime scene. Sherlock raised his voice to carry towards the building even though much of it was whipped away by the wind. “Anderson, you’ve the face of a non-Euclidean Picasso. I can feel myself being sucked into entropy everytime I look at you.”  
  
Anderson glared, straightening from his lean against the brick wall and strutting forward, even  though Sally was pulling him back by the sleeve and whispering furiously. He shook her off and stuck his nose up in a pugnacious look that was at odds with his weasel face. “You can’t consult if you’re part of the case.”  
  
“Recuse myself? I think--”  
  
“I’m not here as _moral support_.” Anderson used air quotes; sure sign of a weak mind. “I’m here for a DNA sample.” He crossed his arms _defensive gesture, classic overcompensation_ , very tedious, and looked at Sherlock with an unconcealed contempt that left him stymied. He had no idea what platform of superiority Anderson was working from.  
  
“You _have_ DNA samples.” Mycroft sounded laconic and bored, but Sherlock could never be fooled by that tone. Gaboon vipers looked fat and relaxed just before they struck, too.  
  
Anderson eyed up Mycroft, weighing his involvement. “Maybe...maybe not.”  
  
“Anderson!” Lestrade barked.  
  
“Who’s to say what his brother tampered with? Who’s to say that he isn’t reliving his crime right now?”  
  
Even Sally gasped at this. Even Sherlock blanked at the very idea, the very gall of such an insignificant man saying...that. Everything went silent for a long moment while Anderson just continued to look smug and awful. Only the steady drip of water and the distant croaking call of carrion crows cut through the stillness. Sherlock could tell that John was just about to do something, _punch Anderson in the face the throat the stomach make Anderson retch from the gut pain yes good_ , his hand was curling into a loose fist and he stepped forward, but he stepped forward into Lestrade’s fingers placed against his chest.  
  
“Sherlock needs you here, not in jail for assault.”  
  
Anderson opened his filthy putrid mouth again, but Lestrade cut him off with a quiet, cold intensity that was very unlike him. “You’re off the case.”  
  
Sherlock heard Anderson’s jaw snap shut and thought: _I will destroy you_.  
  
“Greg...” Sally started, but Lestrade cut her off with a look. Sally looked to the side, and her face tightened up in a moue of unhappiness. Wrong-footed over the revelation that Sherlock was actually human. Interesting. She could barely look at anyone when she had always been confrontational before. She only spoke up because defense of Anderson was second nature to her now.  
  
Sherlock didn’t know if this was a welcome change or not.  
  
“But Lestrade--” Anderson was finally wide-eyed, just now realising that he had no allies in this.  
  
“You’re off. Malhotra’s on.” Lestrade turned to Sherlock, suddenly all competent business. “You like Malhotra, yeah?”  
  
Sherlock decided that he did like this new defense of himself. It was novel and unwelcome in the extreme to all of the _right_ people. “Malhotra is fine.” He had to stop himself from smiling. He could be magnanimous in victory.  
  
“Good then.”  
  
Anderson: “Am I the only one who--”  
  
“Yes.” Greg had become a drill sergeant. “Now leave. I’d told you to wait in the van anyway.”  
  
“But the DNA.” He’d stretched the last into a whine, and Sherlock wondered, for what had to be the hundredth time, how Anderson had managed to fool two women into sleeping with him. He’d deduced exactly how he did it long ago, but knowing a fact and reconciling that fact with what he knew of Anderson after just a glance...it was a disgusting mental exercise.  
  
“I can do it. Or we can wait for another tech. It’ll take weeks to get back from the lab anyway.”  
  
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “If Anderson is telling the truth you should know that I was in Budapest when the first of the most recent string of murders was committed.” He just barely showed his teeth. “And if testing needs to be expedited, do call my assistant.”  
  
Anderson opened his ugly maw to say something else but Lestrade slapped a hand over his jaw, took him by the shoulder and pushed him under the police tape towards the unmarked white van sitting three rows down. Finally realising that he was outnumbered, Anderson plodded over to the van in a cloud of venomous ill-will, spraying water with every heavy step in infantile protest. When Greg turned back to face Sherlock he was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a tension headache.  
  
“Fuck. It’s not that. Talking out his arse, he is. I do need DNA, but either of you would do. We don’t have any of...”  
  
“Sherrinford’s.”  
  
“...on file, no viable samples because Surrey’s evidence storage is a joke. A sibling’s will do just as well. We don’t want to exhume.”  
  
“Do you have a swab kit?”  
  
Greg looked at Sally, who nodded and slipped under the tape before walking to the panda car parked diagonally across two spots. “It’ll just be a mo.”  
  
The silence as they waited was awkward for John and Greg, but Sherlock couldn’t be arsed to care as he and Mycroft went back to their perusal of the building’s exterior. Lestrade was the type to fidget in an uncomfortable hush, though, and he finally had to speak. “I suppose you won’t come in for an interview.”  
  
Sherlock turned to Mycroft. “I love it when they can be trained.”  
  
“I’m redundant then?”  
  
“The yard isn’t going to solve this.” Mycroft waved a hand at him. “You don’t have the necessary resources.”  
  
“I’m not just going to go through the motions, you know.”  
  
Mycroft’s voice was unexpectedly kind. “I know.”  
  
“Are you going to share what you find?”  
  
“Lestrade.” Sherlock’s voice held a warning.  
  
Greg put up his hands. “No jurisdictional pissing. I just want to help.”  
  
“If you _can_ help, we’ll ask for it.”  
  
“And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”  
  
No one had anything else to say to that so they were all decidedly not looking at each other when Sally walked back from the car, donning a clean pair of violet rubber gloves before opening a plastic evidence bag. She drew out the vial and the swab, but paused and looked at Greg for guidance. Greg nodded at her and she approached Sherlock as the Holmes siblings’ lesser evil. She seemed uncomfortable about getting her fingers so near Sherlock’s mouth, smart that , but didn’t hesitate as he opened his mouth for the cheek swab. She was quick and clinical, with none of Anderson’s fuss, and it appeared that Sally could be trained too because she didn’t say one word during the process.  
  
Mycroft and his ability to tank careers was a powerful motivator for good behavior. Or maybe it was because she too had been forced to recategorize Sherlock’s behavior in light of the new case. Sherlock found himself hoping it wouldn’t last long and that she’d soon be back to calling him a freak. He’d appreciate the continuity.  
  
As soon as she had the sample sealed up she left, walking to the van instead of the car.  Greg hung around for a moment more, hands in his pockets in the boyish ‘aw shucks’ pose he struck when he wasn’t sure what to do. “I can’t force you to cooperate, but please, don’t leave me out of the loop.” He rocked forward on his toes a bit. “It has nothing to do with being a cop, either. Just...a friend.” He was addressing the three of them but he was looking at Mycroft, with all of the hideous feeling that entailed.  
  
It was odd, but it was honestly as if Lestrade hadn’t really existed before this moment. Before, he’d just been a slightly better than average copper who let Sherlock in on cases. Now Sherlock would have to go to the trouble of recategorizing people beyond enemy, victim, suspect, witness, Mrs. Hudson, John and not-John.  
  
Dull.  
  
“Um...right. I’ll just...” Greg shuffled off to wait them out in the car, going a bit pink as he left.  
  
Sherlock turned to Mycroft, expression carefully neutral. “You really should do something about that.”  
  
“Shut _up_.” Mycroft glared at Sherlock. “And get back on task.”  
  
Sherlock smirked because he had scored a point but didn’t continue his needling.  
  
Sherlock turned to the building and fell into step with his brother as John trailed after them. John was in a toppy protective mode; the Captain, not the doctor. John wasn’t trailing behind like a dog, he was doing threat assessment. He’d been protective before but the ugliness of Anderson had evidently boiled something up to the top of John’s psyche, and it manifested as an alpha display of the kind John probably hadn’t exhibited since the Afghani debacle that had put a hole in his shoulder.  
  
Sherlock wondered if John’s protective machismo was rooted in something slightly less altruistic. John was insecure about their relationship, that much was obvious. Anything that acted upon Sherlock with greater or equal emotional force than John was capable of was a threat to John’s possession of Sherlock.  
  
Mycroft looked a bit uncomfortable about it all and that made Sherlock want to smile, in spite of everything.  
  
Mycroft cleared his throat and pointed at the corner of the building where a tangle of wires, obviously not up to code, entered the building.  
  
Sherlock nodded but John just scowled.  
  
“Elaborate, please. For the non-mind-reader.”  
  
Sherlock tsked. “I’d discounted the wiring as irrelevant. Homeless squatters often steal power from other sources. This was done quite a while ago; piggybacking energy off of the catalytic converter recycler down the street.”  
  
“Which means?”  
  
“Our killer didn’t run most of the power, but he hacked into the work of people who did.” Mycroft opened the rusty door and waved them through, then turned their attention to the wire spanning the interior. There were Yard floodlights set up, now, great pools of blue fluorescence that washed out everything it touched and deepened the shadows in the corners. “Cameras.” Mycroft pointed to two points on obsolete equipment, but even knowing where they were located they could not be seen with the naked eye without extremely close scrutiny.  
  
“So he wasn’t on site?” John sounded conflicted. Relieved that they hadn’t been shoulder to shoulder with a murderous voyeur, angry that the immediacy of a live suspect was denied to them. John preferred human trails to electronic ones even though Sherlock had tried to tell him that they were _all_ human trails.  
  
“They used pre-existing illegal wiring meant for tellies, hot plates and heaters.”  
  
Sherlock scowled. The killer had been subtle and Sherlock had missed the obvious. The wire was spliced but the small diameter wire that ran to the hidden camera controller was almost cobweb slender, like monofilament that fooled the eye into seeing nothing. Someone had been very careful. “I take it that the cameras are a common type that can’t be traced.”  
  
Mycroft shook his head. “We haven’t been able to trace anything.” He brought the tip of his umbrella down on the floor with an aggrieved rap. “Whoever arranged this was very, very skilled.”  He sighed at the end and when he blinked he kept his eyes closed for a moment. Headache.  
  
He sounded exhausted and it made Sherlock flinch away from his bleak austerity. “You’ve been calling in some deep favors.”  
  
Mycroft shied him a look out of the corner of his eye and gave one almost imperceptible nod.  
  
Legwork. Mycroft hated it, yet he’d been forced into it. Due to Sherlock’s preoccupation? Or just circumstance?  
  
Sherlock examined the patterns of dust, _dust on the floor dust on the wires even though the wires were recently manipulated no prints must collect dust samples from areas of likely tampering_. He watched dust motes catch glints of light in the thick air as he considered Mycroft’s entire mien.  
  
He’d never been an open book to Sherlock. He was an inscrutable wall, and Mycroft kept his emotions so under wraps that Sherlock had occasion to think that Mycroft might not have any feelings whatsoever; Mycroft’s caring had seemed an awful lot like control. But an uncaring Mycroft wouldn’t be spread so thin, and he wouldn’t have shouldered so much of the work. He was the center of a web of information; he didn’t do things himself, he collected the people who could. But he was beyond merely collecting now. There was something roiling below the placid calm, now; calamity below the cold veneer.  
  
Sherrinford had been Mycroft’s sister too, but Sherlock didn’t know if he had ever acknowledged that. Was he doing this for Sherry? Or for Sherlock?  
  
Sherlock didn’t like not being sure, but neither did he want to ask. Asking would telegraph too much. Vulnerability. His lack of omniscience.  
  
A part of him didn’t actually want to know.  
  
Asking might mean letting go just that little bit more and he didn’t think he could do it. He was caught in this endless game of spiteful one-upmanship with his brother and there would be no way out.  
  
They were deeper in the bowels of the factory now, heading for the room that had held the body. Sherlock forced himself to maintain a steady gait since there was no point in putting off inevitability.  
  
The body had been removed. Barts would be their next call. The scene had been trampled into near uselessness by over-excited, under-trained, mentally incompetent mouth-breathers.  
  
It wouldn’t be near the horror of the morning. Sherlock could handle this.  
  
“Are you sure it’s the same man?” John’s much shorter legs didn’t eat up the ground that Sherlock’s and Mycroft’s devoured, so he was almost jogging to keep up. “You’ve both got a lot of enemies. This could be a copycat trying to psych you out.”  
  
“Very.”  
  
“I’m sure.” Sherlock and Mycroft had spoken at the same time, and glanced at each other, bowing to the necessity of the uncomfortable truce, yet not quite knowing how to act around each other.  
  
It was Sherlock who voiced their common thoughts. “Copycats are common enough, but there was too much at the new scene that was never released to the public.”  
  
They came to a stop at the interior door. Sherlock’s hands were on the compression handle, but he just held them there without force. Sherlock closed his eyes and practiced a breathing exercise he’d been taught for vocalists, feeling his diaphragm move on every exhale, letting the familiar exercise calm him.  
  
John was behind him, steady hand coming up to the small of Sherlock’s back, the other hand braced against the door. “But--”  
  
“Never released to the police, Sherlock should have said.” Mycroft inclined his head towards Sherlock. “There were things that we had found and had not shared with the investigative team. It was already considered a cold case by then, and forensic techniques were not as precise in the 1980s.”  
  
“I was just saying--” John glared at Mycroft, Sherlock didn’t need eyes in the back of his head to know that. John gave up speaking to Mycroft and spoke just for Sherlock, more intimate in the space he had created between his arms. “I was only saying...this might not be the same man.” Sherlock snorted at that misguided bit of comfort and all it implied, _you might not have to worry, you might not have to care as deeply as you do_. He’d never thought John would practically beg him to care less about the victims in a case.  
  
Then, with one deep lungful of air, he pushed the handle and stepped inside.  
  
There were more lights here than in the previous room but it did little to alleviate the utter sadness of the place. The body gone, the urgency of the moment and the techs was done, yet the hollow feeling lingered like it was imprinted on the place, a moment of time pressed into the walls, the foundation, the earth beneath them like salted ground after a battle. Like nothing good could grow there again.  
  
The mattress had been removed, back to the Yard for closer inspection, but the wall and its bloody message was still intact.  
  
Mycroft pointed to the far right corner and Sherlock shied him a look. Camera.  
  
Sherlock walked to the center of the space and turned, to take in the full panoramic view. He brought his hands together and rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. “Yes...this is the same man.” He whirled in place, fixing his eye on John before pulling the case file out of his coat, tossing the photos onto the newly cleaned floor, six to a row, before stalking the perimeter of them, comparing them to the room itself. He fired out what he, _they_ , already knew at a rapid rate.  
  
“Deliberate application of blood, knife technique unique to hunters.” Sherlock stumbled for a moment over the words, turned down his mouth, but he was the ultimate master of his emotions. He must be.“The lining of the burlap sacks had been added, after purchase.” Sherlock looked up from a close-up of the child’s head and scowled, achieving normality once again. “He didn’t want their faces abraded. He turned the sacks inside-out, after.”  
  
Sherlock pointed to the wall and the Jackson Pollock-style spatter in monochromatic rust.  
  
John saw that Sherlock was right. In the last photo the bag was pristine white, a shocking cowl of cleanliness and purity amidst the horror of death. Earlier evidence photos showed blood spatter on the inside, raw-looking burlap caked in dusty red. “It’s like coins on the eyes.”  
  
But Mycroft shook his head. “No. Those were obels to pay the boatman. This is more impenetrable.”  
  
“I’d thought it was _regret_.” Sherlock loaded the word with irony. “But that’s at odds with the taunting that’s happening now.”  
  
John squatted to get a better look at the photo. “He couldn’t look at them after what he had done?” He reached out to touch his finger to the white linen against the red. “Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young.”  
  
Sherlock nodded, deliberate and considering because the words fitted so well.“Webster.”  
  
John smiled and said “Dalgliesh. On the telly.” It made Mycroft wince so that was all to the good.  
  
“If it’s only the new ones that are thumbing their nose at you it could still be a copycat.” John. His blogger. His devil’s advocate.  
  
“Moriarty.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Mycroft nodded. “It’s possible, but this feels...”  
  
“...like the original,” Sherlock finished. “We’ve done a thorough profile, and the new killings fit.”  
  
“What’s the profile?”  
  
Mycroft joined Sherlock beside the grouping of pictures and prodded one into alignment with the tip of his umbrella, lips pursing in consideration. “Boot marks around the body, size ten. Not a small man. Country background. An avid and skilled hunter; it’s easy to cover up the taste for the kill if you can use hunting as an excuse. Early to mid twenties at the time; the first flush of killing human targets after years of animals.”  
  
“So no history of animal cruelty?”  
  
“No. This one is good at hiding what he is. He started in his late teens, and the first murder was sloppier. It was probably a fluke or poor police work that there was no real evidence. He’s smart and organized, though, because the next was well planned and well...executed.” Mycroft winced at his own word choice. “Pedophilia and sexual sadism. He can’t maintain a normal sexual relationship.”  
  
“He’d be forty-five to fifty-five now, and he’s learned from each kill. Refined it.” Sherlock looked at the more recent photos. “He never stopped. He wasn’t imprisoned. You don’t go from that,” Sherlock nodded at an older photo and then the wall of blood, “to that, without some evolutionary steps.”  
  
“Someone sophisticated, then?” John asked.  
  
“Sophisticated. Dramatic.” Sherlock gave a half-nod, half-shrug. “And bloodthirsty.”  
  
“And the regret? Maybe he wants to be caught.”  
  
Sherlock walked to the edges of the room, trying to catalog minutiae. Stupid, stupid, to let himself succumb to such crippling base emotion. The scene is ruined, completely compromised by the slack-jawed idiocy of the Yard techs. “You would think so, from the most recent kills.” Sherlock ended up staring at the one piece of evidence left intact, the mocking lyrics, the painted whorls that circled it, the lashes of blood. “It should be gutting him, tearing him apart, yet something isn’t right. The behavior is too erratic, yet the killer is obviously organized.” Did he or didn’t he? Want to be caught, regret his act...so much conflicting data.  
  
John cleared his throat. “So you think the killer was _faking_ regret?”  
  
“I don’t know what to think,” Mycroft answered. “It’s rare for a serial killer to express regret, but it isn’t unheard of. William Heirens had the compulsion to kill, but was also horrified by what he had done. He even left notes for the police, begging them to stop him.”  
  
“Addicted to murder?”  
  
Sherlock stirred out of a quiet reverie. “Yes. Addicted, definitely. Remorseful, unlikely, if we take into account the new scene.” What was he missing in the killer’s psychology?  
  
Mycroft walked over to stand next to Sherlock and put a hand on his shoulder. Sherlock didn’t shake it off, or even bristle like a cat to annoy him, just continued to trace the Latin words and their malice with his eyes.“We are missing something.” He put out a finger to follow the movement of the strokes, trying to put himself into the mind of the man who had calmly applied the design.  
  
“I thought your people took these?” John’s voice held a note of humor and Sherlock backed it up with a contemptuous little laugh at the idea of Mycroft’s people possibly being thorough enough.  
  
“We are missing something in front of our faces, then. Something big.”  
  
Sherlock shook off Mycroft’s hand and spun around to face John. “He staged everything; you could practically hear the Toccata and Fugue. He wanted us to know it was him-- he wanted to see us-- _me_ \--  react on camera.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“We know he wants us to figure this out.” Sherlock tapped the extravagant Britten quote.”There’s been something left for us, something fairly obvious, too. We just have to _see_ it.”  
  
“You said it’s more elaborate. In what way?”  
  
Sherlock stalked over to where John was still examining the photos. “More knifework. The shibari, here,” Sherlock gestured at an abdominal close-up, and a photo of the girl’s thighs, “and here. It’s more intricate. He’s learned, gotten _better_.” Sherlock spat the last word out, voice rough with loathing.  
  
Mycroft gestured at the wall spatter. “This is the most obvious. The Britten quote.”  
  
Sherlock nodded then grabbed John’s hand to pull him up before tugging him over to join Mycroft. “There had been no writing at all at the previous scenes.”  
  
John crowded in next to Mycroft and Sherlock to get a better look. The Latin quote was a bit longer than John would have the patience to brush on. “How was it done?”  
  
“No obvious brush strokes--” Sherlock said, before being cut off by his brother.  
  
“Smooth lettering, rhythmic dripping pattern--”  
  
“Pipette.” Sherlock was decisive.  
  
“The words aren’t haphazard, they are stacked, centered. They have symmetry. Why not just write it out in one linear go? This was well planned.” Sherlock paced from one end to the other. “The blood spatter, here...and here.” He held up his arm, whipping it from right to left, then once again, faster, in an eight count. “The direction is deliberate, first from the right, then from the left. Right hand dominant killer?”  
  
Sherlock stepped back several paces, trying to take in the full picture without dwelling on the individual components.  
  
“So why the circle of squiggles? Lot of extra work just for an effect.” John asked. “Looks a bit Nouveau.”  
  
Nouveau design. Design. Design! It was...  
  
Sherlock took two steps, turned John to him, pulling him in by the scruff of the neck and kissed him, deep and hard. When Sherlock pulled back he was grinning; couldn’t contain his incandescence.  
  
“John. John. You don’t just conduct light. You are a bloody incendiary device.”  
  
“I am?”  
  
“Design! I’d thought it before, but I’d never-” Sherlock cut himself off and dropped his hands from John, suddenly all business. “Mycroft! A computer! A laptop! I need the Adobe Suite!”  
  
Simple. Stupid! Simple. So simple they’d missed it.  
  
Mycroft pulled out his phone and called his driver. “It’ll be just a moment.”  
  
Sherlock was craning his head around, following the curve of the surrounding pattern. He knew what it was, what it had to be, yet the significance of that was...  
  
Sherlock clapped his hands together and hopped in place before turning to Mycroft and grabbing him by the cheeks. “You are going to be sooooo embarrassed.” He gave Mycroft a chaste peck that he couldn’t contain as the giddiness spilled up once again. His chest was heaving, he’d run a bloody marathon in one spot, he needed to get out, to move, to find the criminal bastard who’d thumbed his nose at them...and he could. This was it, he could feel it.  
  
When Mycroft’s driver slipped into the room like the personification of subtle Sherlock was on him, grabbing the laptop and collapsing to the floor in a tangle of coat and legs to boot up Photoshop. The driver left the room at Mycroft’s behest and Sherlock was glad glad glad because this was a moment between the three of them only.  
  
Sherlock held out an imperious hand, snapping his fingers until Mycroft slipped a data stick into his palm. It was the work of a moment for Sherlock to transfer the picture of the bloody wall, and then the interminable minute that it took for Photoshop to boot up.  
  
“Why do I care who the developers are? Open. Open!”  
  
Sherlock dropped the photos into the program, merged them, then clicked through a series of menus until he chose warp. Once Sherlock had chosen an action Mycroft inhaled, finally catching on to whatever Sherlock was attempting. Sherlock really had beaten him to the answer. Now they could both feel idiotic for not catching it sooner. Mycroft, with all of his diplomatic twaddle, had less of an excuse.  
  
“John? Are you looking?”  
  
John sighed and crouched down for a better view. “Yes. Why do you know Photoshop?”  
  
“Don’t be stupid. Fake IDs.” Sherlock smiled at his aggrieved snort. “Look at the ring, John. Look at the ring device around the Latin and remember your Frost. We dance around the ring and suppose...”  
  
“...but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” John finished for him. “You are that smug secret. What--”  
  
“Just...tell me when it begins to look familiar.”  
  
John was about to say something, but Sherlock was pulling threads of the grid out of alignment, straightening one edge, pulling another, gradually shaping the curve into a straighter--  
  
“Hold up.” John sat hard on his arse next to Sherlock, watching him bring another line down...down...“That’s Arabic script.”  
  
“Not all of it.”  
  
“No. But that bit in the middle...that’s...Dari.”  
  
“Do you know it?”  
  
“Bit rusty, and it’s rather a mess mixed with the spatter.” John leaned in, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “It’s nonsensical. Instead, rather, be a...bad? Bad boy? Something about a tree. This is really disturbed. He’d rather be a bad boy in hardship? That doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“Malo, malo, malo.” Sherlock was frowning down at the screen.  
  
“Excuse me?” John obviously didn’t understand what Sherlock had just said, but Mycroft answered before he could ask for clarification.  
  
"Malo, malo, malo, I would rather be. Malo, malo, malo, in an apple tree. Malo, malo, malo, than a naughty boy. Malo, malo, malo, in adversity." Mycroft cleared his throat and looked a bit self-conscious despite his decent tenor. “Young Miles singing about sinning. It’s supposed to refute sin.”  
  
“The same opera?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Then what was the _point_?”  
  
Sherlock moved the final portion of the grid and sat back, looking at it. “It was a message for all of us.” Sherlock slanted a look at John. Calculating. Considering. Examining an idea too ludicrous to mention, yet...“Including you, John.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“Emphatically.”  
  
“And the design on each side?”  
  
“Arabic musical structure is different from western structure. It’s a common maqam.” Mycroft cleared his throat. “That was for me.”  
  
“Mycroft?”  
  
“Sherry was a violinist. I was a singer. And Mycroft--”  
  
“A composer.” Mycroft’s voice held an unusual thread of self-deprecation that Sherlock knew was for show. Mycroft, no matter his deficits, was a superb composer. He hadn’t even left the art. He’d merely changed media.  
  
“But what does it all mean?”  
  
“The Malo? Malo, Malum, Malus. Latin. Easy. But I doubt it means much. The clue is much broader.”  
  
“The fact that it’s Dari in general.” Mycroft gentled Sherlock out of the way and quickly saved the altered photo to a new file. He popped out the data stick which disappeared in a sleight-of-hand maneuver, and his phone appeared just as quickly. He dialed a number. “This is where I need to take over, gentlemen. I’ll have another car sent round for you.” Mycroft had already started a quiet murmuring into the phone before he made it out the door.  
  
John still didn’t quite get what they were aiming for, but he was starting to catch up. “What makes Arabic script so significant? Because I’ve been in the mid-east? Or because...”  
  
“Yes, to all of it. We were right, before. The killer stopped because he moved to an easier killing field.”  
  
“Not dead, not in prison.”  
  
“He relocated. Late eighties, early nineties. Where did _you_ learn Dari?”  
  
“Afghan-” John had a sudden glimmer of what Sherlock was getting at. “The mid-east. He was in the mid-east. That would be the first Gulf War.”  
  
“Not just because you were in the mid-east.”  
  
“A soldier.”  
  
“What better place for a killer to hide than among sanctioned killers?”  
  
“And the obvious trail?”  
  
“That’s where this becomes murky again. William Heirens scrawled _catch me before I kill more, I cannot control myself_ in lipstick at a crime scene. And he, he’s doing the same. A pederast opera and then Malo. Malum in Latin can be both the apple and the adversary. He’s eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge and he regrets it.”  
  
“Regret again.”  
  
Sherlock wasn’t looking at John anymore. What Sherlock was looking at wasn’t in the room. It added up, but Sherlock didn’t like the sum of his thoughts. “Yes.”  
  
“But you said that it makes no sense.”  
  
“Not if there is only one killer.”  
  
He could feel John go absolutely still next to him, but Sherlock was staring at the screen, at the blue LCD flush that illuminated everything and nothing. John’s face was so expressive, so alien to Sherlock, whose default expression was robotic or disturbing, depending on the observer. Looking at John right now would make everything terribly real.  
  
“Two killers.”  
  
“One who regrets. One who taunts. One right handed. One ambidextrous but left hand dominant.”  
  
“What is it?” There must have been something in his voice, some hitch or pause or vocal quality, but whatever it was made John take Sherlock by the chin until they were eye to eye. “What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
“This puzzle really was for all three of us. Not just for me and Mycroft.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“You need to understand that I can’t be sure. Hunches are notoriously un--”  
  
“Sherlock. Your best guess then.”  
  
“Everything about this was personal. This was the work of someone who has a personal connection to us. For Mycroft and I, that was Sherrinford. That was music.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Sherlock took John’s hand in his own and squeezed. “Yet you aren’t following this to its logical conclusion.” John didn’t deserve this kind of weight. “I don’t think it was just any soldier, John.”  
  
Sherlock brought John’s hand up to his mouth and rested his lips against the back of John’s hand. “I think it was someone you knew.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
“Dammit, Sherlock! I’ve told you everything I can remember that was the least bit odd, but we were in the middle of the desert getting shot at, so odd is pretty relative.” John sat in his chair and glared at Sherlock, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered; Sherlock was like anti-glare teflon.  
  
As soon as he took a good look at Sherlock his frustration died and he felt like a right arse. Sherlock had folded himself onto the sofa and buried himself in contemplation; He stared at the photos that John had carefully pinned as if they could give him more information. Perhaps they might, if he only had the patience to wait for a narrower list of possible candidates.  
  
He’d been surrounding himself with things he’d kept tamped down for much too long and John was a possible key to unlocking it all. John could give him instant gratification instead of hard slog…that’s what Sherlock wanted, but that instant gratification was fleeting.  
  
John knew what Sherlock _needed_ , but he was helpless when it came to giving it to him outright. It stung, not being able to give Sherlock what he asked for, and he wasn’t sure if Sherlock even realized the difference between the easy patch and the hard fix.  
  
The visit to Bart’s had been short, brutal, uncomfortable and ultimately useless. All Sherlock had to show for it was a new catalog of inhuman imagery to worry at. Nothing new could be gleaned from the corpse, so they’d returned to Baker Street.  
  
It had made John hurt, that little girl’s death. He couldn’t help but imagine Sherlock’s sister on a similar table, Y-shaped incision joining the other lacerations. And if Sherlock was to be believed, and John always believed him, then John had a tie to the man who put her there. John could feel his lungs collapsing in on themselves; he should be able to help, but he couldn’t. His ordinary mortal mind was no match for the precision instrument that was Sherlock’s. He had no great memory cache, he had no insight into people’s secret histories. He’d been only a man, trying to help, trying to make sense of battle with only ordinary equipment.  
  
When John got hurt he either walked away or lashed out. He couldn’t walk away from this and now he was lashing out at someone who didn’t need to bear that burden too.  
  
“I need something to work with. Until Mycroft gets us a list of likely men who served in both theaters you are my only connection.”  
  
“I know, but you said it yourself, this killer blends in. And even if he was psychotic enough to attract attention it probably wasn’t anything that wouldn’t be blamed on the war. Someone showing signs of instability wasn’t exactly uncommon.”  
  
Sherlock appeared impossibly young and a bit lost in a way that John had never seen for himself. He had been lonely and untethered for a long time before John had met him. John had been able to assemble an incomplete picture from little things he’d heard here and there, and seeing Sherlock return to that lost isolation, even briefly, could break John in ways he’d never before considered breakable.  
  
Sherlock frowned but when he spoke it was tangential to John’s response. “Most of my senses are too acute. I see everything; I see too much. I’m constantly buried under an avalanche of sight, sound, smell. I can only deal with that if I have strict focus, something for me to latch onto as a buffer. If the focus is there the rest becomes insignificant”  
  
“That used to be music.”  
  
“It dried up. Music is nothing without a soul to drive it. You can program a computer to play Bach’s work exactly as he had composed it, but we don’t listen to it performed by a computer. We listen to fallible musicians.”  
  
“You still have your soul.”  
  
“I walled it off. I walled everything off. No soul; no pain. I’m not even sure if I believe in a soul.”  
  
John was able to fill in a bit of what Sherlock wasn’t saying. Sherlock didn’t want to disbelieve in the soul either. “Instead of music you found the work. And to fill in the gaps, you found--”  
  
“Drugs.”  
  
“And now... you need a focus.”  
  
“As bad as it normally is...”  
  
Sherlock trailed off, but John heard it all the same.  
  
“You want pain as a focus, now?”  
  
Sherlock sat up on the sofa and swung his legs off so that he could lean over and look at the floor. His hair fell over his forehead, shadowing his eyes, but John could see Sherlock’s mouth, expressive for once, and the way that it almost trembled was gutting. “Yes.”  
  
He knew Sherlock hated the abstention from the work, the waiting only briefly punctuated by flurried bouts of analysis. But even worse than that, John knew, was how much Sherlock must despise this emotional recidivism. Sherlock was no longer that nine-year-old boy, but those nine-year-old emotions had resurfaced. Pain was fine when dealing with the sensory overload of pink suits and Triad thugs, but Sherlock hadn’t developed a healthy response mechanism for _emotional_ overload other than complete suppression.  
  
John didn’t think pain was what Sherlock needed. It was just the only thing he knew how to ask for.  
  
If Sherlock had still been that child John would have grabbed him and hugged him and never let him go. Had anyone done that for little Sherlock in the aftermath? Had Mycroft pulled him into his bed at night and rocked him till he slept? Or had Mycroft tried to maintain a distant status quo? Become the aloof father figure instead of the support?  
  
John had done that, though; hugged him, comforted him, whispered meaningless things to him, but Sherlock was a grown man, and needed reassurance like a grown man, and John loved him so damn much he ached with it sometimes, stealing his breath.  
  
John was quite proud of how well Sherlock had dealt with everything thrown at him within the past twenty-four hours, but he knew that Sherlock was approaching critical mass and that something would have to give. The combination of emotional upheaval and a stagnant mind was volatile. Nitro glycerin.  
  
That’s what Sherlock was telling him, but how Sherlock meant it and how John interpreted it were two different things.  
  
And goddammit, maybe John was being a selfish bastard, but he wanted Sherlock to want _him_ , not the sexual trappings. He wanted to know if what they had was anything at all once they stripped away the domination and the toys and Sherlock’s repression.  
  
He didn’t know. He really didn’t.  
  
Because knowing wasn’t the same as hoping.  
  
During the past several months John had been able to drain, or at least redirect, some of Sherlock’s furor, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do here; this was unprecedented. Sherlock needed human contact, needed it so damn much, but his only point of reference for that was purely sexual, and he only asked for sex if it involved either pain, domination or both.  
  
If there was one thing Sherlock hated it was being told he was ignorant on a subject, but, _good Christ_ , was he ignorant.  
  
In Sherlock’s warped perspective penetration equaled domination, but John had never subscribed to that idea. He’d dominated, and penetrative sex had been a part of that, but John had also bottomed during plain old vanilla sex and never felt like he was submitting. That was why John hadn’t fucked him yet...he was waiting for Sherlock to understand the difference. He was waiting for Sherlock to understand that it was okay for Sherlock to touch and be touched in turn without there being some ultimate goal that went beyond giving each other pleasure.  
  
Sherlock never initiated sex on the nights when they weren’t sceneing. He would respond to John, enjoy what they did together, but he never asked for it. Hell, he never asked for a kiss or a hug, but he seemed to enjoy it when John gave one to him. Odd behavior for a man who claimed not to be a sub. John figured that he was practicing affection in this relationship based only on the knowledge culled from a previous one (the only one, maybe?). One that had ended poorly.  
  
So John hugged Sherlock, and kissed him in the kitchen, on the stairs, little pecks and long, lush twinings of tongue, big bear clasps and small squeezes, all to let Sherlock know that it was okay, it was important, it was right.  
  
Touching didn’t have to mean getting off. Getting off didn’t have to mean pain or submission. Pain and submission didn’t have to equal penetration.  
  
John’s task was to get beyond what Sherlock could rationalize using whatever half-arsed ritual theory he was employing at the moment, and he was coming to the conclusion that he might just have to show Sherlock this thing he couldn’t discuss. Throw it all out there and point to it, saying ‘See? This. This!’ Sherlock could scoff at the words, but not the act itself.  
  
Right.  
  
Easy.  
  
Right.  
  
And if there was some portion of him that was actively fleeing from dominating, well, that was nobody’s business but his own. Sherlock trusted him, and John needed to honor that trust. He couldn’t give Sherlock what he asked for if it wasn’t in his best interest.  
  
He couldn’t give Sherlock a lot of things right now.  
  
(Jeezus. Jeezus. He couldn’t even imagine knowing...)  
  
But he could give him this.  
  
Sherlock was still looking at him like the most doe-eyed of Oliver Twists begging sir for more.  
  
John...John was tired of fighting. Wasn’t quite sure why he was fighting. Like war. Like Afghanistan. Like life.  
  
John stood up and took Sherlock’s hand, pulling him upright before leading Sherlock upstairs. John’s room was better equipped for what he had in mind now. Which, according to Sherlock’s currently crap level of sexual understanding, probably wasn’t much.  
  
John pulled the covers down the bed and retrieved the lube from  his bedside table, then turned towards Sherlock, who stood in the door, uncertain and trying not to show it. John could tell now when Sherlock was being genuinely arrogant and when he was pretending to it. John usually ordered Sherlock to strip, but he wasn’t going for a subservient frame of mind at the moment, so John approached Sherlock, putting his palms to Sherlock’s chest, finger pads kissing his collarbone before stroking his hands downward.  
  
He loved the feel of the muscle, long and lean from too few calories, loved the way the nipples firmed under his touch. John brought his hands down to Sherlock’s hips and pulled him in for a kiss. Sherlock bent his head to John’s and let John map the topography of his lips, chin, cheek sandy with barely-there stubble.  
  
This was soft and slow exploration, with no drive or teeth, just the movement of soft flesh to soft flesh, the thrust and give lazy and golden like treacle.  
  
John went for Sherlock’s buttons, slipping each out of the buttonhole with no hurry. He only paused the kiss to take each wrist in his hands to undo the buttons at his cuffs. Sherlock looked at him, implacable grey eyes absorbing everything, not blinking. John pushed the cotton over Sherlock’s shoulders and Sherlock dropped his arms from John’s waist so that the silk-slick cotton could slip down his arms to puddle on the floor.  
  
They kissed again, and this time John spread his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, softer than John’s new sheets, curls springy against his palms. He had hair like a baby, remarkably at odds with his personality. Sherlock tasted like tea and baking soda toothpaste, and that taste blended with the smell of him, animal musk and burnt sugar overlaid with the expensive rosemary and lime of his shampoo.  
  
Sometimes John felt as if he could do this all day, just devour Sherlock in small sips instead of the great big gulps that Sherlock invariably took of everything. Kissing and softness didn’t serve the ritual, so maybe they were incidental; Sherlock had no off button, and everything was either mineminemine nownownow or bloody useless. No in-betweens except for a few brief spaces that John had carved out for them. John was happy that he was part of the mineminemine group, but he wanted to slow Sherlock down for this, make him appreciate the journey. Sherlock...had no patience for that.  
  
Strange, considering the way Sherlock had explained ritual to him, but Sherlock was also fighting assumptions about sex, about John. About power and control.  
  
This ritual had grown too big for Sherlock to own alone, and adding another person to the decision making process had to have changed the outcome. And that made John wonder if Sherlock’s aversion to soft and sweet wasn’t just a lack of patience, but one created by fear.  
  
If John ever ran into Victor Trevor he was going to kick some righteous posh-softened arse.  
  
Sherlock controlled every single damn thing that John did, either through direct action or just by existing. John woke and thought of Sherlock. John went to sleep and dreamed of Sherlock when he had only dreamed of blood and despair before. The hours filling the between times were filled with Sherlock.  
  
And John loved it.  
  
Who did that make the bottom? Who did that make the submissive? Was there any difference at all between Dom and sub or did they occupy the same space?  
  
Drove him nuts, thinking about it sometimes. Did Sherlock realize that? John had told him in a pretty blatant way, but he didn’t feel like Sherlock knew it except in an abstract fashion.  
  
John grabbed Sherlock’s bottom lip between his teeth and gave a gentle tug that mimicked the way he pulled Sherlock to the bed by his belt. He fumbled with the buckle for a moment, distracted by his hands skimming Sherlock’s abdomen, and the way it tightened against the play of his fingers. Sherlock’s trousers puddled at his feet and John couldn’t help it, he was down on his knees, removing shoes, stepping Sherlock out of his clothing, yanking down pants until Sherlock was naked and his.  
  
John couldn’t keep his mouth off Sherlock, licking up Sherlock’s inner thighs and feeling a fine tremble there. He traced deep blue veins, shocking against the pale, smooth skin, with a light caress that was more tease than substance. He was still amazed that he got to do this, that Sherlock had let him close enough, considered John worthy enough, to share this with him.  
  
John worked his tongue against the crease of Sherlock’s thigh, and the smell of Sherlock’s sex, the deepening of Sherlock’s scent was a primitive animal-brain aphrodisiac. When John outlined Sherlock’s bollocks with a wet swipe of his tongue the muscles in Sherlock’s thighs flexed and seemed to seize under John’s hands.  
  
“John. What...”  
  
John traced between them with a lick, ignoring the tickle of hair as he sucked at Sherlock’s scrotum, enjoying the salt and the musk. Sherlock’s fingers came down to hold John’s shoulders, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, or John.  
  
“What are you doing? I thought...”  
  
John wrapped his lips around one testicle and rolled his tongue around it before applying a gentle suction. He brought one hand around Sherlock’s thigh so he could flutter a finger over Sherlock’s perineum in a tease before applying firm pressure in time with each movement of his mouth. “John.”  
  
John felt Sherlock’s fingers against his hair, not pulling, not even gripping, but patting and stroking as if John might pull away at any moment and Sherlock didn’t want to hinder that. When John finally did pull away with a last lick it was only to press kisses to the base of Sherlock’s cock, blowing hot air against the shaft as he lipped his way up to the crown. He worked the foreskin with gentle teeth and tongue, rolling the thin layers of skin and soaking them in saliva as he tugged and pulled and worked it down with mouth alone to reveal the swollen tip, the moist slit that was already welling up with bitter and sweet.  
  
John enveloped the glans in his mouth and held it there, not even sucking or licking. He was passive around Sherlock’s cock, as he looked into Sherlock’s widening eyes. He was stretching the tension between them, creating anticipation as he felt Sherlock twitch against his palate, but that endless loop of sensation that he loved, the one created by mutual eye contact, mutual synchronicity in the moment, was broken when Sherlock turned his head away. Sherlock’s fingers suddenly tightened in his hair and he thought that Sherlock might push him away, but those fingers never went any farther. No push away, no thrust towards. Just that finger clench and the aversion of Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock’s denial of...of...what was it? The physical connection was there, but he didn’t want to recognize or accept how John felt. No. That wasn’t right. Sherlock couldn’t accept how _Sherlock_ felt.  
  
Idiocy due to emotional poverty. That sounded more like it.  
  
Bloody hell was he tired of fighting this battle because normal people did this every day and Sherlock wasn’t so fucked up that he couldn’t experience it.  
  
John raised his hand, the one that wasn’t cradling Sherlock’s bollocks, and used it to touch Sherlock’s chin and turn his face, his eyes, back to John’s.  
  
And John swallowed.  
  
Sherlock’s legs gave a coltish wobble before locking back into place, but John couldn’t grin because his mouth was full and diving deep, deep, not as deep as Sherlock could go but he had a respectable mouthful and the look on Sherlock’s face was gratification, devastation, elation, reverence, panic.  
  
And he couldn’t blame it on pain and domination.  
  
John’s hand hadn’t even forced Sherlock to look, just nudged Sherlock’s chin. It didn’t make Sherlock’s jaw move. It didn’t make Sherlock open his eyes. John was quite sure that Sherlock realized that there was no dominance involved, just a gentle, silent request from a lover.  
  
The fact that Sherlock acquiesced told John that Sherlock wasn’t as entrenched in denial as he seemed.  
  
John bobbed his head but it was a languid movement that he could maintain all damn day. Sherlock wanted it harder and faster because he wanted everything that way, but John kept to his pace, sometimes pulling off with a tongue wrapped around the glans, taking a breath as he rubbed his cheek against Sherlock’s cock, making Sherlock gasp his name and halt on a short breath even as he maintained the visual connection that held them together even more than lips and cock.  
  
He was worshipping Sherlock, and Sherlock was quite a bright boy. He would get it.  
  
Sherlock started a slight flex of his hips, trying to get John to take a bit more, go a little faster, but John was having none of it and wouldn’t let Sherlock dictate the pace because once John gave that up he might as well cede the whole struggle. If you gave Sherlock an inch he’d take...everything.  
  
God, John wanted. Had wanted this. He’d told Sherlock he wasn’t lifestyle. He liked the kink between them, but this is what he’d been missing...not the vanilla of the sex itself but the connection in spite of it.  
  
John eventually pulled away, making the disconnect as wet, loud and filthy-sounding as possible. He never averted his eyes from Sherlock’s, had possibly stopped blinking, he was so mesmerized, and Sherlock looked startled. Maybe a little confused. Still a bit fearful.  
  
John undid his own fly and got to his feet, slithering his trousers and pants off and kicking them into a into a pile on the floor, leaving him naked and thanking fuck that he’d ditched his trainers earlier. He ran his hands up Sherlock afterwards: trembling flanks, quivering stomach, rapid tattoo of Sherlock’s heartbeat under his hands.  
  
And when John stepped towards Sherlock he slid his hands around. One reached down to cup Sherlock’s arse, and the other went around Sherlock’s shoulder to pull him into a kiss that tasted of Sherlock’s pre-come on John’s lips, of Sherlock’s confusion and heart. Their bodies were touching all along their length. John had never minded being short until this moment because he had to pull Sherlock down and lift himself up to align them like he wanted to, cocks rubbing together in the creases of each other’s thighs, moist slippery skin finding the perfect curve and hollow to glide against.  
  
John pulled back just enough to speak, and there was barely a breath between them.  
  
“You don’t pay attention to words. Not really.”  
  
“I adore words. Ask anyone.”  
  
“Words lie.”  
  
“That’s _why_ I like words.”  
  
“So I want you to deduce this instead.”  
  
John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and used his weight to make them fall to the side, bouncing them on the bed in each other’s arms. John licked Sherlock’s lips open with just the tip of his tongue, not demanding an entrance but enticing one. Sherlock’s mouth parted and John kissed Sherlock like they were both dying tomorrow. He was usually so on guard around Sherlock, trying to give him less ammunition, instead of all of it at once, but he wanted Sherlock to feel all of what John felt, and John’s only recourse was baring everything.  
  
Cards on the table.  
  
God this was mad, and likely to backfire, and one of the most self-destructive things he’d ever tried but he just couldn’t _not_.  
  
This kiss wasn’t the raw possessiveness and ownership that happened during a scene. It wasn’t the soft comfort of one stolen during a cuddle on the sofa. It wasn’t just a step that led to mutual sexual enjoyment. This kiss, the kiss, was simply John’s heart, completely bare and trusting and stupidly obvious. So obvious that even an idiot berk like Sherlock should be able to figure out what was what.  
  
And of course, _of course_ Sherlock tried to fight it.  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
Sherlock knew that John couldn’t be expected to recognize an intelligent sexual sadist in the middle of war, but he couldn’t stop pushing it because John was the only link they had so far to the original killer’s past.  
  
There was a parabola of light peeking over that dark horizon and John was they key to unlocking it.  
  
If John were like him...if John applied his methods...if John had a memory palace...  
  
But John was not, and Sherlock would not like him for it if he were.  
  
They’d gone to Bart’s to inspect the body of little Olivia Smythe. Ava Williamson’s body had been interred months ago and was not available. Two murders close together; months instead of the years that had separated the man’s earliest kills. Was the escalation something that had happened gradually in Iraq, or was it there a new variable included in his madness? Did he have a more brutal partner?  
  
Olivia had been neatly stitched back together, looking like a porcelain doll: inexpertly mended and washed white; bone china tinted with ash, turning to blue alabaster under the harsh hum of the overhead lights as he circled her table in the morgue. Smaller than Sherrinford, dainty hands, dainty toes, hair stick-straight like a sheaf of raw wheat, instead of Sherry’s short, dark mop. Muppet hair he’d called it as he cut it when they were seven, ignoring the fact that he had the same hair.  
  
Molly stood in the corner, arms crossed over her chest, bottom lip worried raw. She’d heard, of course, but didn’t say anything. She disliked the autopsies of children under the best of circumstances, and Sherlock guessed that this one had been especially hard.  
  
She’d nodded at him and got out of his way. A better offer of condolence he couldn’t imagine.  
  
Ava’s body gave up no clues but the obvious, and Sherlock hadn’t really expected otherwise. Smart killers: the clothes were gone, no biological evidence left for crafty investigators to analyse.  
  
Tomboy with a mother who pushed her into cisgendered attire and hair-style. Keen on football, drawing, Tae Kwon Do.  
  
He’d pulled the sheet up to her chin to cover the wounds and the more clinical incision. Eyes closed, lips slightly parted to reveal gap teeth, otherworldly pallor; he could almost imagine that she was asleep.  
  
He’d walked away then. There was nothing for him there, and he’d known it before he’d left Baker Street. But he’d needed to be thorough; he’d needed to exorcise one more ghost.  
  
The scene was tapped for clues, the parents couldn’t help because it was a crime of opportunity, the body held nothing new: the only existing link to the killer was John, and John couldn’t deliver what John couldn’t see.  
  
221B felt a bit like a prison now. He had to wait at home base. He had to stay functional. He had to admit that John couldn’t magic up a suspect out of speculation and hope.  
  
Sherlock had snapped at him, later, and John snapped _back_ so he stopped his interrogation of John and focused on the photos that wallpapered the flat. He’d hoped that something new would jump out at him but he was afraid he was at an impasse until Mycroft (again) delivered the means to continue.  
  
But John...was John. And John would never leave him alone.  
  
He thought he caught concern, fond exasperation, worry, but the base note of it all eluded him, worried at him like a terrier all the same. But John took his hand, a silent agreement to own him, hurt him, make it all go away for a bit. Do the hundred and one things John had promised as he’d unselfishly gotten Sherlock off.  
  
John pulled him, not through the kitchen and into Sherlock’s room, but up the stairs and into John’s.  
  
Sherlock hesitated at the door. They generally kept all of the toys under Sherlock’s bed, so John’s room seemed an odd choice, but it was the domesticity of the scene before him that struck him as incongruent. John was turning down the bed, retrieving supplies, looking back at him with a warmth that blue eyes shouldn’t be capable of producing according to any color theory Sherlock knew, even Johannes Itten’s mystical rambling on the nature of hue and tone.  
  
Sherlock didn’t like to miss things. Not missing things was his _raison d'être_ , but he had this inescapable feeling that he was suffering from inattentional blindness: there was an obvious stimulus here, but he couldn’t see it because his attention was subverted. Was he so immersed in the case? In the attraction of pain? Or was it an interference effect? He had too many competing mental processes; maybe one was negating the others.  
  
But he needed this. _Needed_ it.  
  
And maybe, once this was done, he would be remade enough to understand what was wrong (different?) with John.  
  
John came to him and kissed him, ran his hands over Sherlock’s body, and Sherlock waited, waited, waited, for the trap to be sprung, John lulling Sherlock into a false sense of vanilla security before grabbing his hair and taking control of the kiss; taking him.  
  
But that moment never came. John mapped his mouth and undressed him with deliberate laziness. When John pulled away to undo Sherlock’s sleeves Sherlock could only stare at him with mute anticipation, wondering where this was leading, trusting John to get him there because John was the genius in the bedroom.  
  
The next kiss was similar to the first. The taste of John was bright and electric on his tongue but John steered it so slow that Sherlock was becoming nervous with anticipation, had to stop himself from twitching with impatience because he wanted all that John could dish out and John had the habit of drawing out the anticipation longer if Sherlock whined about it.  
  
He gradually deepened the kiss, adding more tongue and the edge of teeth to pull at Sherlock’s bottom lip. He walked backwards, pulling Sherlock with him by the belt, and Sherlock went gladly, gratefully. They bumped the bed and John stroked his belly, and Sherlock could feel the shaking of John’s hand and John’s hand was shaking, why was it shaking?  
  
The shaking of John’s hand told Sherlock that, yes, he was missing something obvious, something that could reduce John, strong, fearless, adrenaline-addicted John, to a  
hand tremor when the threat of death could not.  
  
He almost said something, he wasn’t sure what, but John was on his knees for him, undressing him, then his mouth roaming the sensitive skin of Sherlock’s inner thighs, his bollocks, his cock. John went down on him sometimes, but it was often from a position of dominance, and it had never been like this. This was a slow game, a slow burn that went beyond a blow job. John took a meandering path, leaving no area untested for sexual response. Licking, sucking, rubbing; he  pressed his nose into Sherlock and inhaled deeply in a neanderthal way that shouldn’t have made Sherlock’s blood effervesce the way it did. Sherlock started shaking, shaking like John had been shaking, watching that mouth work him over, coax every nuance of feeling to be had from the act of fellatio, worshipping Sherlock like Sherlock worshipped John.  
  
A surprise about-face that seemed somehow forbidden, and wrong. Dangerous.  
  
Sherlock had kept his hands fisted at his side, but now he couldn’t stop them reaching out, petting John’s hair, smoothing down the stubborn tuft that often stuck up in the back. “John. What...”  
  
But he couldn’t get out any more than that as John sucked one bollock into his mouth, rolling it against his tongue with a gentle suction that almost hurt, it was so exceptionally fine. Sherlock clutched at him, grabbed his shoulders, tried to remember not to hurt the left one, tried to...  
  
“What are you doing? I thought...”  
  
A wet finger slid up his perineum to apply firm pressure that followed the beat of John’s mouth upon him, and the combination was a strain on Sherlock’s composure. It was amazing. Beautiful, giving, real, earthy, incredible and John John John, “John.”  
  
Sherlock couldn’t stop touching him, couldn’t stop feeling John, couldn’t help it as John looked at him and held him in the deepest bondage he’d ever known with nothing but the motion of hands and mouth and the look in those fathomless eyes that made Sherlock fall down, down, down...  
  
Sherlock had to look away, it was too intense. It left him too--  
  
But John touched him. His face. His jaw. And coaxed Sherlock back to look as John held him in his mouth, hard and vulnerable and wanting, but Sherlock had no eyes for that, had eyes only for John’s eyes, and when John swallowed Sherlock still couldn’t look away, even though it felt as if he were dying a little. Because this hurt.  
  
This _hurt_.  
  
John was an inescapable fact. John took him slowly and terribly and left him with wanting and a nameless terror that still couldn’t overwhelm the magic of being wanted in this way, by this man.  
  
Sherlock wanted it over with. Sherlock wanted it never to end.  
  
The two desires were mutually exclusive and his vacillation between the two was tearing him apart.  
  
He wanted John to give him orders. He wanted John to tell him what to do, make him bleed, use his body. That was easier.  
  
John never stopped looking at Sherlock.  
  
John never stopped looking at Sherlock.  
  
John.  
  
When John drew his mouth away from Sherlock’s length for a final time he hollowed his cheeks on the long sucking motion, wet tongue sliding up the shaft, pulling away from the head with a dirty ice-lolly lick and a bob of his Adam’s apple.  
  
John stared at him, hungry, as he shucked his clothes; stared at him, devouring, as he stepped into Sherlock, touched Sherlock. Sherlock felt John’s hands stroke him, grip him, suddenly calling attention to the fact that Sherlock himself was almost crawling out of his own flesh with something unnamable and hadn’t even noticed it because he’d been consumed whole.  
  
When John took his mouth he could feel the percussive rhythm of heartbeat against heartbeat, too close to differentiate, too rapid to time. It felt like it was trying to escape; Sherlock’s, John’s, it was practically the same thing now and he wasn’t...  
  
When John spoke Sherlock only answered on autopilot. The conversations between mouths and between eyes were of two different natures he was sure.  
  
John dragged him to the bed, and...  
  
...and...  
  
...that.  
  
John kissed him.  
  
John had kissed him before but this wasn’t just...  
  
Kissing wasn’t...  
  
John.  
  
It was, simply, John.  
  
He could feel it, as John’s tongue swept in and seduced his own, in the way John’s hands clasped him by the elbows. John’s body was taut and primed for sex but John himself was pliant and submitting to...not to Sherlock. Sherlock would never want that. No.  
  
John was surrendering to the totality of _them_.  
  
People had many facades that they presented to the world, and multiple levels of facade that they showed to others depending on a hierarchy of importance. John’s hierarchy of importance went from government official, to stranger, to acquaintance, to sister, to friend, to landlady, to best friend. Sherlock was the last stand, the final level of veneer, and he’d been ridiculously pleased with that.  
  
But then John had removed that last veneer, shown himself as naked and vulnerable underneath, and Sherlock realized that he hadn’t understood at all.  
  
It was brave.  
  
It was _idiocy_. He was witnessing emotional suicide, because who in their right mind would...  
  
Sherlock would ruin this, somehow.  
  
That, in turn, could ruin John.  
  
Sherlock thrashed his arms, struggling away from John’s grip, but John wouldn’t let him go. John’s hands viced down so Sherlock bit his lip till he tasted iron, and snarled as he pulled away from John’s mouth and the terrible, terrible truth it was speaking without a sound.  
  
John was bleeding now, but Sherlock couldn’t be arsed to care because this was not what he agreed to, this was not what he wanted, and how could John do this to him, the selfish bastard.  
  
“You have a safe word.” John ignored the way Sherlock squirmed, and leaned down, not kissing Sherlock’s mouth, but kissing the exquisitely sensitive skin of his neck, leading to his ear. It was delicate flesh, and even the slightest brush could make Sherlock judder in arousal, but right now it was like paint thinner on an open wound because it made...it made...  
  
Sherlock kicked, but his leg tangled in the sheet as he thrashed and John was able to grab him by the shoulder and flip him onto his back.  
  
John had the mount, stradling Sherlock’s chest, Sherlock’s wrists in his hands. This was a familiar position, but not the same, because John wasn’t trying to hold him down and possess him, hurt him like he wanted. John was breathing heavy and licking blood from the corner of his lip and trying not to hurt him because John was too bone-headed to realise that he wasn’t hurting Sherlock _physically_.  
  
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”  
  
“You know.” John looked at him, and Sherlock looked away because as much as Sherlock liked to mock it, John had emotional wisdom, and Sherlock didn’t want to be read.  
  
Not like John had opened himself up to be read.  
  
Not like that.  
  
Sherlock kept his eyes averted and closed them hard, but he stopped fighting. The tension didn’t leave him but he was no longer trying to claw at John.    
  
“I’m making love to you.” John scooted down Sherlock’s body and placed a kiss to his sternum,  his bellybutton, making Sherlock convex then concave his stomach with a rapid patter of need. He was still holding Sherlock’s wrists, but the hold gentled until the touch was merely a cobweb between them, whisper-thin.  
  
“No.”  
  
“I’m making love to you because I’m in love with you.”  
  
Sherlock tried to stifle the sound he made, abort it before it could become substantial, but he only managed to catch it in his throat where it fluttered like a dying bird.  
  
“And you.” John spoke hushed secrets into Sherlock’s hipbone. “You love me too.”  
  
It wasn’t a question.  
  
There was no question.  
  
Just...truth.  
  
Sherlock couldn’t say anything to that. Couldn’t lie. Couldn’t tell the truth. Could only marvel at the simple power of the web John had caught him in. Carbon nanotubes weren’t as strong.  
  
John nipped at him, just his hip, but it made Sherlock’s body curl. Sherlock’s hands found their way to John’s hair and shoulders as John moved further down. He bypassed the obvious, cock and bollocks,  raising Sherlock’s arse up to lick at his perineum and press his teeth into the curve of Sherlock’s buttock.  
  
John’s tongue was a subtle tattoo on his skin as he graphed a path across Sherlock, lips cool but brand-hot against him. He tracked every nerve ending Sherlock possessed, it seemed, as he ran slick-wet-writhing lemniscates over groin and thigh.  
  
When John first touched his tongue to Sherlock’s arsehole, tracing the rim with only a few scant millimeters of connection, Sherlock transcended his body, his vision like the boost of a rocket briefly lighting the firmament.  
  
Sherlock groaned, a deep, gritty, yearning in his chest, and the sound spurred John on. John was lapping at him, the gentle flutter replaced by the deep working of his tongue, fucking into him, sloppy and wet as his lips sealed over him and sucked, and wasn’t that a filthy thing? That noise, that slurp of suction and the answering groan that rattled in John’s lungs. That tongue driving into him in waltz time, one two three, one two three.  
  
John spread him further, wider, and pulled Sherlock open with his hands so he could burrow deeper, get closer. It was so intense that Sherlock had to bite the knuckles of one hand with his teeth, like a girl in an old black and white melodrama that John had insisted he watch and not delete. His other hand was buried in John’s hair, pushing for once, guiding John where he wanted him, and it was good, so good.  
  
The rimming was so gluttonous that Sherlock didn’t even register the introduction of John’s fingers until they skimmed his prostate. He froze for a moment, hands palsied against John, and then he cried out and started speaking, babbling nonsense and noise and every stream-of-consciousness bit of his soul into the charged air.  
  
John, John dear God, John what do you, how do you, please John, more I can’t take please please, this is, no idea no idea, John so good, good, good is an inadequate adjective, splendid magnificent, John, you are The Ring Cycle, Mathis Der Maler, the Rite of Spring, the Marriage of Figaro.  
  
John, you are La Mer, you are Einstein on the Beach.  
  
You are the Messiah and St. Matthew’s Passion.  
  
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Otello. The Goldberg Variations. Rhapsody in Blue. Bitches Brew.  
  
Purcell’s King Arthur.  
  
You are Music to Play in the Dark.  
  
A Limnal Hymn.  
  
Sherlock wasn’t sure how much he said aloud and how much he kept inside, but it was all there, inside him, breaking free and shattering into a chaotic existence as John slicked them up, slicked himself up, no condom, nothing between them, they’d already shared blood anyway, and then he _pressed_.  
  
John pressed him all over. John’s lips, pressed into Sherlock’s collarbone, John’s face turned towards him to look at him as he did it. John’s hands, pressed against Sherlock’s as they clasped, and how had that happened? Sherlock holding hands with a man as they made love. It sounded freakishly humorous, but the reality of it was anything but. Every little snippet of romantic twaddle he’d ever heard about the act of fornication came back to him in a rush because none of it seemed quite so silly after all.  
  
John’s cock pressed in, head slipping around his hole before finding purchase and ingress, and oh, oh, Sherlock could feel his body stretching around John, that first breach of his sphincter stretching him wide, reminding him that John was by no means a small man in the ways that counted.  
  
He’d used a lot of lube, and after Sherlock had sealed tight around the head John slipped in fast, big, big, but Sherlock wanted it so much, relaxed into it so much, and John was suddenly full inside him and big, so big, and Sherlock could feel his pulse there like it was Sherlock’s pulse, and in a way...it was.  
  
John canted his hips on the outstroke so that when he pushed back in his cock slid straight against Sherlock’s prostate, and it was almost too much, like the oversensitivity after an orgasm, but too much was shivery and gorgeous at that moment, liquid sunshine instead of blood in his veins, ethanol sweetness dissolving on his tongue like candy floss.  
  
Sherlock was already on the verge of orgasm, he’d wanted this for so long. No-- not quite this. Sherlock had wanted sex. Fucking.  
  
He wanted John to pick up his pace, to flex into him harder, matching greater force with the deep penetration of those languid, rolling thrusts. But John just looked in his eyes and smiled, giving him a minuscule shake of the head before leaning in to kiss him.  
  
This was true ownership. It didn’t require pain or complex direction. It hadn’t needed rules or guidelines or that stupid safeword to make it fact. John had offered everything to gain everything. John was the bravest man Sherlock knew, and he had no choice but to fold himself up like a peace dove and slip himself into John’s pocket.  
  
Sherlock was not quite as brave as John but it was unnerving and fright-raising all the same. They were at the end point of Occam’s razor: stripped down to bare need and bare love.  
  
For a boy that had put on every neurotypical affectation like a layer of overcoats, the removal of it all was overwhelming.  
  
Freeing.  
  
John.  
  
A layer of sweat filmed between them, making them slide smooth, and John pressed Sherlock’s legs back even further, deepening the places he touched and allowing their chests to meet and mingle with a salt sheen.  
  
John’s scent was like fire and tea overlaid with the civet smell of fucking and it was delicious, Sherlock wanted to taste, so he did, pulling John even closer, wrapping around him in an uncomfortable parody of a sexual netsuke, but he needed John, needed him mouth to mouth, needed to follow that bead of sweat down his neck and lap, lap at his suprasternal notch, his chest, then a quick, final kiss to the corner of his jaw when he finally had to pull away, unable to sustain the doubled-up position any longer.  
  
John could roll his hips like a belly dancer, and the slow thrust was driving Sherlock out of rational thought and into basic lizard-brain territory.  
  
“Please.”  
  
“You don’t have to beg.”  
  
“I know.” Sherlock bit the inside of his cheek as John pulled out halfway and started shallow thrusts that bumped into his prostate on every inner glide. “But I want...”  
  
“Do you know?”  
  
Sherlock rolled his head on his neck in exasperation. “Yes. Yes. You love me, I love you. This isn’t just sex. _Now get on with it_.”  
  
“You sure?” John’s eyes were bright and elfin even though Sherlock could see building desperation behind them. “I don’t need to prove my point just a little more?” John punctuated that with a quick dig of his hips.  
  
“John!”  
  
“Right.” John drew out, which was _not_ what Sherlock wanted, and flipped Sherlock over, pulling at his hips until his ass was in the air and his cheek was pressed to the pillow. Sherlock gave him a dirty look over his shoulder and snarled.  
  
John smirked. He laid one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, the other on Sherlock’s hip, and ran his wet cock along the crack of Sherlock’s arse.  
  
“This work for you?”  
  
“John. _Fuck me_.”  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
When John slammed in there was a brief moment of pain, but that just underscored the pleasure that followed. John spread him wide and went as deep as he could, a fast stroke in, hips driving against arse, slower stroke out, almost slipping out before the hard return. John was a constant rub against his prostate, near constant stimulation, no mystery there, and the unceasing beat of it was sending him over too quick.  
  
Sherlock gasped for air and clawed at the pillow, held on, eyes tight, tears leaking because this was pleasure sharp enough to cut. John was bent over him, panting hot breaths and obscenities and love words into his spine to mingle with the moisture collecting in the small of his back.  
  
Sherlock had never orgasmed without cock stimulation, but he could feel it building in his belly, and he laughed at the feeling, incredulous and high and it was so, so good and...  
  
He couldn’t hold on, that ball of energy inside him getting luminous, an unstable explosive. He let go, feeling the hot wash of electrical charge reverberate inside him, overwriting every previous orgasm, making every other significant encounter with anyone else turn to dun. He could hear John gasp behind him as Sherlock fell apart, and John’s fingers bit into him, leaving bruises, his mark, but John held off his own orgasm. Sentiment? Sherlock couldn’t think. His legs shook through it, wanted to give way beneath him, so John rolled them to the side, still inside him, still flexing in.  
  
John pressed his cheek to Sherlock’s back and insinuated his arms around him, clutching Sherlock like a security blanket.  
  
“That.” John cleared his throat. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”  
  
Sherlock snorted and clenched around John, but he didn’t disagree.  
  
“You are...this is...” John pressed little fluttering pecks of his lips into Sherlock’s shoulder, an odd counterpoint to his quickening thrusts.  
  
“John.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I want you to come in me.” Sherlock bore down on John, and John hissed like a predator in his ear.  
  
“Yes.” John was digging claws into his chest, biting at the base of Sherlock’s neck, and when he finally came the orgasm drew a harsh yell from his throat, the sound muffled by Sherlock’s flesh in his teeth, the small pierce of skin, the shallow breaking of blood.  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
The calm lassitude after sex was new to Sherlock. He’d never wanted to laze around in bed with anyone before.  
  
John was idly tracing patterns into Sherlock’s chest with a finger, occasionally flicking a nipple into hardness.  
  
“Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?”  
  
John raised his head to give Sherlock a sideways look. “You have the oddest pillow talk.”  
  
“John.”  
  
John dropped back to the pillow. “Are you asking if I believe in God?”  
  
“Gods don’t matter. What I wanted to know is whether you believe in any sort of afterlife.”  
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought of it much. Growing up, if you had asked my mum, she would have said we were Church of England, but the only time it ever really figured in our lives was Christmas, and that was really about the presents. And after seeing what war is like I have a hard time believing in a beneficent God.” John turned towards him, putting one hand under the cheek that was pressed into the pillow. “Why do you ask? I assumed you were an atheist.”  
  
“I...am.”  
  
“You don’t sound that sure.”  
  
“After Sherrinford died I spent a lot of time trying to make some sense of it. She didn’t feel gone. Not really. If I walked into a room it seemed like she had just stepped out of it. Sometimes it still feels that way.”  
  
“That’s not uncommon.”  
  
“I read a lot on religion. Everything I could get my hands on. But it seemed so rubbish. I wanted to believe that she wasn’t just...not there.” Sherlock stroked John’s hair. “Wishful thinking, the idea of a soul. It’ll be completely disproven once there is human cloning. Then the masses will have to find their comfort somewhere else.”  
  
John grabbed Sherlock’s wrist, then twinned their hands together. “Did you? Find any comfort?”  
  
“Religiously? No. Philosophically? Perhaps. Philosophies that support modern scientific thought instead of denial of the truth. Remind me to tell you about the correlations between theories like the Heisenberg Principle and Schrodinger’s Cat and the Buddhist Doctrine of Emptiness. Buddhism spoke to me on many levels, even as a physicist.”  
  
“Really.”  
  
“All _is_ suffering, John.”  
  
“Everything?” John smiled and leaned in for a kiss.  
  
Sherlock returned the kiss, but his smile was tempered with something solemn. “Even this. Any happiness is ephemeral at best, and the knowledge that it is transient is painful. Viparinama Dukkha.”  
  
John snorted. “Not really comforting, there, Sherlock.”  
  
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock sat up, propped up on his elbows. “The Buddhist goal is cessation of all suffering, the cessation of existence. I believe in a final death. Buddhists believe in Samsara and Nibbana.”  
  
“I never thought I’d be having this conversation with you.”  
  
“I gave up on any religious study when I pushed her loss completely away. But now...”  
  
“You like the comfort that Buddhist philosophy provides even if you don’t buy into the idea of endless rebirth.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Sherlock spooned up to John’s back and buried his face in the nape of John’s neck.  
  
“I suppose contemplating the nature of Ultimate Reality might just save the wall from further mutilation. But...”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Doesn’t Buddhism focus on sublimating the ego?”  
  
“John?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Piss off.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
They were, for lack of a better term, _cuddling_ , on the sofa when Mycroft came, bearing four manila folders. Sherlock would deny it but it was a sofa snuggle all the same.  
  
Sherlock lined the folders up in a row and raised an eyebrow at John. “Are we ready to go to war?”  
  
John nodded. “You are the very model of a modern major general.”  
  
“Why John, that was almost clever.”  
  
John gave him a two-fingered salute then turned to the files. His face fell, unable to sustain anything other than stoic acceptance of the job before him. He hoped that Sherlock was wrong, that he had no ties to this, but even as he thought it he knew it was a false hope. And, if it helped catch a killer and gave Sherlock some closure, it was a burden he would gladly carry.  
  
“These men fit the profile, the locations and the timeline. If they aren’t familiar, we have other avenues of investigation available, but...” Mycroft didn’t need to finish. Other avenues were less likely to produce solid leads.  
  
John took a breath and took the first file. There was a photo clipped to the top of the paperwork. Edward Axelrad, dusty and unsmiling in desert camo. Unfamiliar, but John skimmed through the documents anyway, looking for something to jog a memory.  
  
He finally shook his head and placed it down.  
  
The next file’s candidate was in civvies in a bar with a few mates, grinning drunkenly. Abel Williamson. Not familiar.  
  
He put it with the other.  
  
When he opened the next file he tensed immediately. He didn’t even need to glance at the name. Knew the face. Knew the shape of his jaw and his words, the photo catching him as he spoke, and his hands clenched on the file with the certainty that he felt.  
  
“John.”  
  
Sherlock had tensed when he had tensed, knowing that this was it. Mycroft leaned in to look at the killer. John tossed the file to the table, where the papers fanned out. The photo was on top. A handsome man, late 40’s, black fatigues, speaking with another soldier.  
  
“John?” Sherlock looked torn, torn between the file and the look on John’s face, and the fact that Sherlock would pause for even a moment at a time like this said more to John than a hundred flowery declarations.  
  
More than he deserved, because he was so, so sorry.  
  
Sherlock’s hand found John’s arm and squeezed.  
  
“I saved his life, you know.”  
  
“John.”  
  
“He was bleeding out. The shrapnel had clipped an artery.” John tapped the picture with a strangely steady hand. “Sebastian Moran would be dead if not for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> The next fic will be I Must Hunt My Shadow.
> 
> Please review. It means a lot.


End file.
